Zuckerberg Admits Facebook Suppressed New York Post’s Hunter Biden Laptop Exposé on Joe Rogan’s Podcast

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO, accepted on Thursday that Facebook took note of Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) ‘warnings’ regarding the New York Post exposé on Hunter Biden’s laptop and limited the distribution of the story ahead of the 2020 US Elections.

Zuckerberg, who appeared on an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience hosted by podcast titan Joe Rogan, said the company followed FBI’s recommendations regarding the New York Post story and limited its sharing on its platforms.

The New York Post in an exclusive report revealed that US president Joe Biden’s son used his father’s office influence, when the latter was the vice president in Obama administration, in business dealings with companies from China and Ukraine.

Rogan on his podcast asked the Meta CEO on how Facebook handles controversial news and then referred to the Hunter Biden story.

Zuckerberg regretted how Facebook handled the issue but said the approach taken by the social media company was ‘reasonable’.

“I think it sucks, though, in the same way that probably having to go through a criminal trial but being proven innocent in the end sucks,” he said.

Rogan defended the New York Post and said the media outlet is ‘smart’ enough to realise what to release and what to omit.

Zuckerberg said: “Yes, we have those too. We took a different path than Twitter. The background here is the FBI came to us and to some folks on our teams and said – ‘Hey, just so you should know, you should be on high alert. There was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have noticed that there is going to be some kind of dump of things similar to that, so be vigilant’.”

He pointed out that Facebook’s approach was different from the response given by Twitter: “What Twitter did is that they said ‘you can’t share this at all’ but we did not do that.” He explained that Facebook took note five to seven days after the story was published to determine whether it was true or false with help from third-party fact-checking websites.

Zuckerberg then said this is the action that Facebook took: “The distribution on Facebook was decreased but people were still allowed to share it. You can still share it and consume it. The ranking and appearance on news feeds was a little bit less. Fewer people saw it than they would have otherwise. ”

Zuckerberg defended the decision and said it was taken since the FBI asked Facebook to remain vigilant. He said people would view the decision based on which part of the political spectrum they belong to.

Following the publishing of the report by the New York Post, many said it was a Russian attempt to sabotage the 2020 US Elections and hurt Joe Biden’s chances. Social media giant Twitter took down the New York Post’s account for 16 days.

One of the emails allege that then vice-president Joe Biden got the corrupt prosecutor general of Ukraine fired to benefit Burisma and Hunter’s business interests.

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